Are You "Pulling Ragweeds"?
"What are you doing over here on this vacant lot? . . . "I'm pulling ragweeds." . . . "You must have hay fever" . . "No, I never did." .. . "Is someone paying you?" . . "No money. Just the personal satisfaction of improving our neighborhood." . . . "I have not heard of any local campaign against ragweed. Are you starting one?" . . . "No, I am just doing it myself." . . . "Then I do not understand why you are working at it." . . . "It is hard to understand these days when it has become so popular to think that people must organize to do things or must have a government agency to do them. High taxes and big government are quite unnecessary if individuals would themselves take more responsibilities. I believe that I can improve my neighborhood, and that the result will not be less, but greater than we are likely to think." (Just One Individual — Christian Economics, Vol. IX, Feb. 5, 1957, Number 3)
Then, there was that old Southwestern pioneer who demanded when he died to be buried upright because 'he had never looked up to any man while he was alive and he had no intention of doing so after he was dead." Such rugged individualism made the great Southwest and our Nation what they are today — the greatest places on the face of the earth. Such an attitude as compared to the insipid dependence on "centralized authority" which characterizes our age of "creeping socialism" is like an invigorating breeze from the ocean or a sudden plunge in the icy waters of a mountain lake on an August afternoon.
In this article, we are particularly concerned with the spiritual, not the political. In the New Testament, our Lord places the major responsibility for the accomplishment of His will upon the individual man and not on the organized group. The responsibilities which He places on the organized group are limited to the individual congregation and find no application in an amalgamation of congregations for any purpose. Socialistic trends in government, economics, and religion are demoralizing. They are subversive of the dignity of the character of the individual, and enervating in their effects. The dignity of the soul of the individual is the basic divine concept of the whole scheme of human redemption. No command of God is arbitrary, but rather, looks to the restoration in the individual of the image of God which has been marred and distorted by sin, and ultimately to the eternal salvation of the soul in "the world to come." For this reason, individuals responsibilities either of persons or congregations cannot be surrendered, voluntarily or otherwise, to centralized agencies for their fulfillment. Individual responsibilities are not discharged by proxy in the Lord's service. The purposes of God are circumvented and the subjective blessings and influences which inhere in His commands are lost when individual responsibilities are surrendered to a central authority or agency whether it be a congregation, a human organization, or even another individuals.
Whatever God lays upon the Christian as an individual, let him perform that duty, as an individual. Let him not try to shift such responsibility to the congregation. Whatever God lays upon the organized group, the local congregation, let the congregation, as such, perform that task. Let not the congregation shift this responsibility to some centralized authority or agency created by the fallible wisdom of men. If such a shift of responsibility is tolerated in the kingdom of God, both individuals and congregations will ultimately be demoralized. The enervating effects of such a course are inescapable. The proof of this statement is demonstrable. We have but to cite the socialistic states of our day in the realm of government as living testimony. Centralization of authority, power, and resources is the road to slavery in economics, in politics, and in religion. The Roman Catholic Heirarchy is living proof of this fact in the realm of religion.